Category Archives: Seminars and Lectures

Joe Iwanicki – Anthropology – Social SciencesIwanicki’s research, The Archaeology of Trade: A Study of a Twentieth Century Logging Camp, was presented at Michigan Tech’s 2017 Undergraduate Research Symposium this past week. With the assistance of LouAnn Wurst, Iwanicki looked at archaeological data from a 1900’s lumber camp in the Munising Michigan area called Coalwood. The data consists of artifacts that allow for investigation of trade and commodity flows. The archaeological record is combined with GIS to map and recreate the trade networks of the past, something rarely explored by archaeologists.

The Undergraduate Research Symposium highlights the amazing cutting-edge research being conducted on Michigan Tech’s campus by some of our best and brightest undergraduate students.

The students showcasing their work today have spent a significant portion of the past year working alongside Michigan Tech faculty and graduate students to explore, discover and create new knowledge. They’ve spent long hours in the lab or out in the field designing experiments, gathering data, creating new models and testing hypotheses. They’ve applied their classroom knowledge in new and sometimes unexpected ways, and developed new skills that will propel them forward in their careers.

Sarah Fayen Scarlett (SS)recently traveled to Toronto to present a paper at the American Studies Association conference entitled, “Pathways of Resistance: Tracking Mobility and Alternative Identity Performance in Early Twentieth-Century Suburbs.” This research is part of her developing book project.

The Carnegie Museum hosts tours of Huron Creek. Carol MacLennan (SS) and Alex Mayer (CEE) will host a pair of tours tonight. Begining at 5:30 p.m. and again at 7 p.m. the tour of Huron Creek travels from its rerouted home behind Walmart to its entry into the Portage Canal. You will learn about how area mines and other development changed the route and the ecology of Huron Creek. $25.00 per ticket ($20 members) includes guided tour and refreshments at Museum.

Professor Emeritus Larry Lankton will present “1,900 Lives — The Human Cost of Mining Copper” at Fort Wilkins Historic State Park in Copper Harbor on Monday, August 17, 2015 at 7:00 p.m at the West Barracks.

This conference will bring together academics and practitioners from relevant disciplines such as international law, international relations, political science and marine biology, NGOs, representatives from EU institutions and international organisations to discuss the EU’s potential contribution to enhance Arctic governance. A roadmap for increasing the effectiveness of the EU’s action in the Arctic will be drawn at the end of the conference.

About 40 biofuel and bioenergy researchers from many countries in the Pan American region (from Argentina to Canada) will attend a workshop hosted by the Sustainable Futures Institute at Michigan Tech Wednesday, June 3, 2015, through Friday, June 5, 2015.

The goals of the workshop are to develop a research roadmap report (RRR) with diverse international perspectives and to recommend priority areas for future research. The RRR will be disseminated to funding agencies such as the National Science Foundation, Department of Energy and other federal research sponsors in the United States and their equivalents in other Pan American countries, as well as to industry and the general public.

The work is part of the Partnerships for International Research and Education (PIRE), funded by the National Science Foundation (NSF). Kathy Halvorsen, a professor of natural resource policy at Michigan Tech, helps lead the PIRE research group, which is highly interdisciplinary.

“As we move forward with the project spanning six countries, I am always thinking about how are we going to be able to answer our research questions,” Halvorsen says, adding the project spans social, natural and engineering sciences. “We have to think about how we do our research so we can compare and integrate our data across the countries and disciplines.”

Barry Solomon, a Tech professor on the PIRE team, noted that Brazil introduced the flex-fuel car engines now seen across the U.S. that can burn both high-ethanol and low-ethanol gas blends, and that bio-based ethanol has been a major boon to an economy that’s contributed to steady growth in recent years.

“The U.S. talks about energy independence, but it’s not (independent),” he said. “Brazil essentially is.”

A project this large can be unwieldy, so Halvorsen works with subgroup and country team leaders to effectively pursue their interdisciplinary research in bioenergy. Studying bioenergy naturally builds off multiple disciplines and goes beyond just the global biofuels discussion.

In some ways, the PIRE research is like bioenergy yoga, looking at the best ways to build both flexibility and strength to move gracefully through changing climates and economic markets. From small plantations to spanning continents, the PIRE research seeks sustainability and resiliency using the insight of many disciplines.

The U.P. is leading the effort to not just preserve natural resources, but to put them to work. The work is part of the partnerships for international research and education through the National Science Foundation.

Artisanal small-scale gold mining (ASGM) has a long history in West Africa, supplementing agricultural livelihoods and helping to fuel West African empires, ancient Egypt, and medieval Europe via extensive trade routes. ASGM continues today but has taken on different dimensions through the influence of globalization and mechanization. The widespread practice now threatens the habitat, health and future of West African wildlife including endangered West African chimpanzees (Pan troglodytes verus). In this talk I will be discussing the socio-ecological impacts of ASGM activity on chimpanzee behavior and resource use at the Fongoli field site in southeastern Senegal. The surge in gold prices over the past 10 years has intensified gold mining in Senegal, increasing transnational migration, human population, and environmental degradation, and consequently altering how chimpanzees use the landscape. The impacts of ASGM are now considered among the species’ largest threat in Senegal, and conservation efforts are underway to protect the country’s remaining chimpanzee population last estimated at 500 individuals.

Dr. Kristin Floress, a social scientist with the USDA Forest Service in Evanston, IL is giving a talk in 201 AOB from 3:00 to 4:00 p.m. Monday, March 16 titled “Community Capacity for Watershed Management.”

Her visit co-sponsored by the Visiting Women & Minority Lecturer/Scholar Series (VWMLS) which is funded by a grant to the Office of Institutional Equity from the State of Michigan’s King-Chavez-Parks Initiative, the Center for Water and Society, and the Social Sciences Department.

Abstract:An individual’s ability to engage in actions that are protective of water resources is driven by a variety of factors at the individual and community scale. This presentation explores several cases of watershed and lake management in Wisconsin using the community capacity for watershed management framework (Davenport and Seekamp, 2013). Individual indicators and governance principles are assessed and used to provide direction for designing effective water programs.